


Four Things That Didn't Happen on the Day of the Guts' Departure (and one that did)

by wanderingaesthetic



Category: Berserk (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Suicide, Violence, berserk is its own warning, uncomfortable sexual situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26134819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingaesthetic/pseuds/wanderingaesthetic
Summary: Four ways the eclipse might not have happened, and one way it did.
Relationships: Casca/Griffith (Berserk), Griffith/Guts (Berserk)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 68





	Four Things That Didn't Happen on the Day of the Guts' Departure (and one that did)

1

Casca leaned her face against the cold glass in a dazed state between meditation and dreaming. Very little of her life had been dedicated to rest, to taking a break, and she found she wasn’t good at it. After her things were mended, cleaned, washed, oiled, sharpened, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She supposed she could wander to the nearest pub, some of the Hawks were probably already there, drinking and shouting and gambling, but she rarely felt entirely at ease in that environment, and the cold weather made the prospect of going outside at all uninviting.

She didn’t much feel in the mood to be around other people now, anyway.

The morning’s snow had turned into rain that would freeze into a hard crust and make the cobblestones treacherous. Casca watched droplets gather on the diamond window panes and found her thoughts wandering to Guts. Which direction was he headed in? Had he found shelter for the night or was he shivering under this rain?

She had finally accepted that she was wrong about him and then he had to leave.

She let out a breath that fogged on the glass. Who was going to take his place? With Guts gone, she supposed that made her the ranking member of the Hawks behind Griffith himself, but the Raiders’ new captain would probably come from within Guts’ former command. That would be the simplest thing. Who would it be? No one man stuck out to Casca as having the temperament. However, Guts wasn’t exactly who she would have chosen for the position either.

Corkus had demanded to know as much this morning on the hill. Griffith had at first acted as if he hadn’t even heard him, and then had waved him off vaguely, said he’d tell them tomorrow.

Casca would have been confident that Griffith had a replacement in mind for all five of his captains that stood on that hill. She knew for a fact that had been the case for the man who had been her predecessor . He had given her a shouted command that a wing of the battlefield was hers when the previous captain was knocked from his horse by a blow to his head from a morningstar. Whether the man died instantly or had been trampled by the enemies’ horses in the retreat was unclear, but he did not survive the battle. Casca was shocked that she had been given the responsibility, even as she had been vying for it. Griffith had barely blinked.

_Did Griffith never consider the possibility that Guts might die in battle?_ Was he really so precious to him that he refused to consider it as a possibility? Or was it only the shock that Guts had willingly walked away from him that had so unbalanced him?

Griffith had left them on the hill without a further word, looking down, hiding his face with his hair. None of them needed to be so avid a watcher of Griffith as Casca to recognize that he was shaken.

As if the thought of him summoned a vision of him, she thought she saw a flash of white blonde hair turn the corner of the street below.

Had she imagined it? Why would he still be out in this weather? Was it him? That hair was unmistakable, and she knew his walk. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Yet a man who was going for a stroll in this weather was a man who wanted to be alone.

Still…

After a moment’s indecision she left behind her little rented room and her fire, grabbed her cloak and headed out the door.

She ran down the stairs to the street, turned the corner she had seen him disappear around, and ran the length of the street until it split. She skidded to a halt at the crossing, looking to see which way he could have gone. Fat, freezing raindrops pelted her. She didn’t see him, so she chose a direction at random and took the next right turn.

“Griffith!” she called after him. He didn’t turn to her, but there was a hitch in his step that confirmed beyond doubt that it was him.

“Griffith, what are you doing out here? It’s freezing, you’re going to get frostbite,” she said, holding her cloak over both of their heads.

He stared at her as if struggling to make sense of her. His hair was wet and lank and his coat dripping with rain. He didn’t seem to notice, or at least didn’t care.

“Come on, let’s get out of this,” she said, and he allowed himself to be led by the arm at a trot, back to Casca’s rented room.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked as she slammed the door against the weather. “We’ve got to get you out of these wet things,” she said, pulling off his coat, which was soaked through, and beginning to unbutton his damp waistcoat.

“I’ve been out since you came to me this morning,” he said vaguely, shrugging out of his waistcoat and watching bemusedly as she worked at the buttons of his shirt.

Casca snatched her hands away from him and blushed. Some protective instinct had ran away with her and prevented her from realizing that she’d brought him into her home and was undressing him.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I didn’t think--! I… I…”

Griffith said nothing to relieve her embarrassment, but continued unbuttoning his shirt himself, fumbling with numbed fingers. Casca turned her back as he removed that too, and moved closer to the fire.

“I don’t suppose you have anything dry I might wear?” he asked after long seconds of her embarrassed silence.

“Nothing that would fit, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. You were right, it was good to get out of the wet things. I was beginning to go numb. I’m afraid I went out without a proper coat.”

“Here, I’ll just get you a—“ she turned to press past him to her wardrobe, trying and failing not to notice that he was fully nude now, his bare feet on her rug near the fire. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

Casca tried to hand him the blanket without looking at him.

“Casca,” Griffith said, not taking it. “It won’t hurt you to look at me.”

Casca did, and took in his blank expression before looking down quickly again.

“Come now,” he said. “It’s alright.”

She tried to keep her gaze fixed on his face but her eyes flicked downward to take in his body. She closed her eyes, unable to take any pleasure at all in the sight amid the awkwardness of the situation.

Suddenly, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close, into a kiss. His lips were soft against her tense mouth. She dropped the blanket in shock and pulled away. He reeled her back in by the waist.

“Come now, I know you want me,” he said softly. She stared, his face so close, beautiful, merciless, his gazed fixed and dead. “We should all take what we want, if we can.”

He kissed her again, and she tried to let him, closed her eyes against the slide of his lips, let him dip her in his arms, pull at the laces of her jacket, but…

His eyes had been so flat, as if he wasn’t behind them, as if they opened onto an abyss. Like she’d caught him at the river, once, bathing and tearing at his own skin with his fingernails.

She planted her palms on his chest and pushed him away. “No,” she said, staggering back.

He let go of her, but with the ghost of a snarl on his face. Indignation, like when he had drawn his sword on Guts that very morning. “No?” He looked at her, calculating, the brief flicker of emotion vanished. “Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll go.”

Casca put a hand to her knitted brows. “Not like this.”

“Not like this,” he repeated, and like a sailor calmly adjusting the sails to a change in the winds, his entire demeanor changed. He tilted his chin downwards, put a hand to his chest and let his shoulders sink, his gaze flicked toward her and away, a convincing show of shyness were it not for his forcefulness of a few moments ago. He pouted his lips. “Will you touch me?” he said softly. “Please,” he said, reaching a hand to her face and let his fingers trail down her cheek and to her chest and jerking them away with a tiny gasp as if he were horrified by his own daring.

She stared at him with her mouth slightly open. Had he used this act on Gennon?

“You can have me,” he said. “All of me. Anything you want,” he said, dropping to his knees and sliding his hands up the back of her thighs and working at the laces of her trousers.

It was like something from a fantasy, from a dream, something she’d thought she wanted. Yet she felt nothing but horrified disgust. She stumbled backward, away from him.

“Griffith… no. You’re not yourself.”

He dropped back on his haunches with another flicker of indignation and got to his feet. He strode toward where his clothes were hanging on the back of the chair.

“No,” Casca said, blocking his path. Their eyes met. Flames licked from the abyss.

“Give me my clothes, Casca.”

“No.”

He lunged for the chair. Casca tried to block him and toppled it. They both scrambled for them, Casca getting there first and somehow managing to bundle them in her arms. She threw the window open as Griffith tried to pull her down, and threw his clothes out into the snow. Griffith let go of her. She closed the window and latched it, her hands shaking. Slowly she turned to face him. He stood, fists clenched. His gaze flicked from her to the door and she had a feeling he was calculating the value of going out naked into the snow to retrieve his clothes. He made his decision and collapsed onto the rug in front of the fire.

Casca sighed. She picked up the blanket from the floor and threw it around his shoulders. “You must be cold.”

“Why?”

“I can’t let you leave,” Casca said sadly, sitting beside him. “You’re not alright.”

“You think I’m a danger to myself?”

“I think you might do something you’d regret.”

“What makes you think I’d regret it?”

“I’m not the one you want,” Casca said softly.

Griffith’s gaze into the fire became very fixed. “Do you think Charlotte--?”

“Not Princess Charlotte,” Casca said.

Griffith frowned into the flames. He pulled his knees in close to his chest, ankles crossed, fetal. He hugged himself, absently worrying at a spot on the back of his neck with his nails.

“Am I so transparent?” he said after several breaths.

“No,” Casca said. “I’ve just been watching you very closely for a long time.”

Griffith’s mouth twisted. He shifted so that his hair hid his face. He was digging into the skin of his neck with his nails now, and Casca saw there were two thin lines of dried blood there already, at the spot, Casca realized, where Guts’ sword would have struck him if he’d followed through.

He cried nearly silently, a single, shaky intake of breath his only tell.

“I wish he’d killed me,” he said, almost too softly to hear. “I don’t know why he didn’t, if he hates me so.”

Casca put a hand to his back. He tensed and pulled away from her touch, continuing to pull his nails through his skin, reopening the scabbed scratches to draw a trickle of blood.

“My entire life, I have wanted only two things,” he said. “I still have… my dream, but without him… all of it is ash.” He stopped the scratching of his fingernails suddenly and turned his face to Casca, looking like a pale, stunned deer. “You shouldn’t see this,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have to be alone. You’re only human, Griffith.”

Griffith rested his forehead between his bare knees and shook his head. “I can’t be. I shouldn’t be. If I’m going to decide the fate of hundreds, hundreds of thousands, I shouldn’t be. If I’m unbalanced by such a… a… such a petty thing….”

“’Petty’? Griffith…. you’ve had your heart broken.”

Griffith stopped speaking. He rocked and hugged himself and tried to hold back tears so desperately that it looked like some other creature was trying to escape his body. He finally lost the fight and let out a sob all the more wretched for how hard he’d fought it. “How do you stand it?” he whined. “How do you--? How do you survive this?”

Casca couldn’t answer, she merely sat beside him, curled against herself in a ball similar to the one he was in.

“I don’t think Guts hates you,” Casca said when Griffith had calmed somewhat, and continued when he didn’t respond. “Do you remember when you were talking with Princess Charlotte, by the fountain? On the night of her birthday party?”

Griffith’s attention snapped to her.

“Guts and I heard the whole thing.”

Griffith’s gaze turned back toward the fire, his gaze flicking here and there as he recalled what had been said.

“Of course. Yes,” Griffith said in a near whisper. “Of course he would hate me. I’m surprised he didn’t leave sooner, with all I’ve asked--”

“No!” Casca said. “You’re not getting it! You said that your friend had to be your equal, that he couldn’t be someone you gave orders to. Guts wants to be your equal, Griffith. He had to find his own dream. Because he wants to be your _friend_.”

“My friend?” Griffith asked, staring into the fire, comprehension dawning. He pulled the blanket closer around himself. His gaze softened and his lips curled into a syrupy sweet smile.

2

They moved as one, Guts swinging his massive sword in a sure, downward arc that Griffith lunged to parry. Griffith blocked the blow, reinforcing his wrist with his left hand, throwing Guts’ sword wide, and redirecting to slice Guts’ left shoulder.

Guts barely reacted to the hit and was already moving, letting the momentum from Griffith’s block swing his blade outward, arcing back for a low blow, gritting his teeth as the pain hit him. Griffith, a look of panic in his eyes, leapt over the blade in lieu of parrying, but Guts sword caught the heel of his boot, causing him to land unsteadily. Perhaps because of this, or because of Guts’ overwhelming strength, his next parry was ineffectual, only serving to slow Guts’ swing to Griffith’s left side.

Ribs crunched and blade sliced through flesh. Guts had cracked armor plate with such blows. Griffith wore nothing but his coat and shirt.

Guts dropped his sword, instantly regretting… everything. Griffith fell to his knees in the snow, blood blooming through his jacket, holding his side.

The others were rushing to Griffith’s side, Judeau and Casca first, Judeau ripping at Griffith’s clothes to get to the wound as Casca lowered him to the ground, staring and stricken.

Judeau’s lips pressed together in a grim line as he examined the damage. Griffith was coughing blood, bright and frothy.

“Please, do something,” Casca whispered against tears.

“I… I can’t,” Judeau said shakily. “The wound’s too big. The… the blood and the air will collapse his he—“ he stopped as his voice broke. “I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeated, to Griffith or to Casca, Guts couldn’t say.

Griffith curled on his side, gasping for breath, coughing pink onto the snow as his men watched in stunned silence. Rickert stood with his hands over his mouth, tears running down his face. Pippin knelt and pulled the boy into a hug. Corkus leaned against the tree with one hand, staring unbelieving at the scene before him.

It was slow and ugly and awful to watch.

Griffith reached out for Guts, his friend, his killer. Guts dropped to his knees in the snow to take his hand. Guts opened his mouth to speak, but his throat constricted and nothing came out. Tears were flowing warm down his face, blurring his vision as Griffith coughed and gasped, as his lips turned gray-blue. Griffith mouthed something but didn’t have the strength to get out the words. His coughs weakened, slowed. There was one final gasp, and then silence.

No one’s eyes seemed to be able to leave his body, crumpled and bloodied, somehow smaller in death, his hair fanning like frost in the snow. No one spoke. Their breaths seemed too quiet, too close, muffled. Rickert sobbed. Corkus laughed weakly.

“I’ll fucking _kill_ you!” Casca screamed suddenly, shoving Guts. Stunned, his eyes still on Griffith’s unmoving form, Guts could hardly respond. She beat at his chest, punched him where Griffith had wounded his shoulder. She made a screeching, animal noise as she stood and kicked him in the temple hard enough to knock him flat in the snow and make him see stars.

“Casca!” Judeau gasped, but made no move to stop her, until, too late, she was picking up Guts’ dropped sword as Guts struggled to stand. Judeau and Pippin lunged for her, but too late as she awkwardly lifted the hilt of the long, heavy blade over her head and plunged its tip into Guts’ heart.

3

Guts’ sword redirected the blow, snagging on a chink in the blade and angling it in exactly the direction Griffith had feared, into Guts’ neck. The moment seemed to last forever, Griffith’s lips pulled back in horror, his momentum already carrying him forward, inevitable.

Guts’ blood sprayed across Griffith’s face, into his hair. Worse, the feeling of his blade striking flesh echoed up his arm and became a part of him. He had beheaded probably dozens of men, killed even more with similar slashing strikes to the neck from horseback. He had slept easily afterwards.

This one would be different.

Guts, not seeming to notice the wound, readjusted his stance for a riposte, his blood spilling onto the snow. He looked puzzled by it and grabbed at the side of his neck. His front leg wouldn’t hold his weight any longer and he fell to one knee in the snow.

Griffith threw his sword aside and caught him, slowing his fall to the ground, his hands shaking.

Guts opened his mouth to speak, but wasn’t able to. Blood still gushed from the wound, darkening his already red cape, staining the snow, staining Griffith’s hands and hair and coat. Tears were flowing freely from Griffith’s eyes, mingling warm with the blood. Guts’ eyes were already going glassy as he tried to focus on Griffith and reached up to him weakly. Griffith took his hand, but the grip soon grew slack.

Too late, Griffith thought to try to stop the flow of blood from the wound, but he only smeared more blood on his hands. As Guts’ eyes stared blankly up at the sky, Griffith’s hands fluttered meaninglessly at his chest, willing a breath, a heartbeat.

There was nothing.

Griffith’s captains were shouting around him, but he couldn’t make the words make sense. A weak laugh that ended on a sob escaped his throat. He thought of the little boy that had brought a toy knight onto the battlefield and died in his service. He had broken his own toy.

He couldn’t bring himself to move or look away from Guts’ body. He measured the young, dead man in the snow against Guts’ shy, twisted smile, loud laugh, cocky stance, puppyish eyes. Never again, because of him. Dead in the snow, because of him. Griffith had some notion to feel the last warmth from his body and buried his hands in his hair and his face in his chest. But he was already colder than a living human, already another defeated corpse. Griffith still couldn’t leave him.

Eventually hands and voices were urging him to stand, urging him to leave, lifting him from his dead friend’s chest. He tried to pull himself away, and saw the glint of his sword in the snow. He let himself be lifted to his feet and dragged away, and with a burst of strength escaped their grasp and lunged for his sword. He made to plant the hilt in the snow, to angle the blade toward himself, but his captains, with instincts and reflexes hard won in many battles, did not let him. He hissed and snarled and screamed and wept as they pulled him up. He found himself more tightly bound up in arms, sword twisted from his grasp. He was carried away, put in a room, made to drink something that made him sleep. 

When he woke someone had washed the blood from him and changed his clothes, and that upset him, because the blood was all he had left of Guts. He couldn’t find any motivation to move from the bed. Casca came and urged him to sit up, to stand, to move to a chair. She brought him food that he didn’t eat. He didn’t know how much time passed. His captains came to speak with him one by one and he gave them little answer. Night fell, a day passed, or maybe two. Or three.

There was a knock at the door. He didn’t move from the chair, or speak. The door opened to reveal Princess Charlotte, like a being from another universe in a pink and brown striped gown. She wept and wailed and threw herself around his neck.

She babbled about how long it had been since she’d seen him. Said that she’d heard what had happened and didn’t know what was wrong with him, that she hoped she could help.

“I love you,” she said. “Please, say something. Say anything,” she said, shaking her head in a way that scattered the tears in her eyes.

Griffith remembered that he had wanted his own kingdom, once, a castle. He remembered the men that had died, the men he had killed, to obtain that dream. He remembered that this young woman was the last cobblestone on his path to that castle. Somehow, that route was still open to him, if he only had the will to walk it once more. He should, shouldn’t he? So many had died for him to get here.

He couldn’t imagine ruling a kingdom. He couldn’t imagine commanding an army. He barely had the will to lift his arms to grab the shaking shoulders of the young woman who was pressed against him, wetting his collar with her tears.

He should kiss her, he thought, tell her that he would be alright, that he had a massive shock but that he would recover.

He couldn’t, he could only hold her at arm’s length and stare at her.

“I feel nothing for you,” he said, feeling free to say it, free to think it for the first time. He envisioned all the men who had died for him, all those whose deaths he had caused, all their corpses piled high for an impossibly tall pyre. All of it worthless. All of it for nothing. In his mind’s eye, he threw himself on top of that pyre.

“You should be glad I feel nothing for you, princess,” She looked at him with round, wet eyes that he dimly supposed were beautiful. His own felt like sawdust.

“I know you must have been through something terrible,” she said. “And that’s why—“

“You’re a gentle soul, aren’t you, princess? You abhor bloodshed, don’t you?”

He recognized, distantly, that he should feel bad for what he was about to do, but he was only acting correctly, cutting out an infection that had already spread too far. She should hate him. He wanted her to hate him. He wanted her to hate him because he didn’t have the energy left to hate himself as much as he deserved.

“Let me tell you the truth. Do you know how many men I have killed?” He asked in a whisper. She shook her head. “I don’t know either. I don’t even know how many men I have killed with my own hands, dozens, at least, possibly hundreds. The number of men that have died in my service is in the thousands, and the number of men my army have killed are in the _tens_ of thousands. And do you know why I did it?”

Charlotte made no move for a long moment, but eventually she did shake her head, obligingly playing her part.

“Why Princess Charlotte,” Griffith said with saccharine sweetness and a ghost of his usual closed-lip smile. “It was all for you. Don’t you see? It was all to marry _you._ In order to meet you, I had to become part of the nobility, and the only way for a commoner to become part of the nobility is to kill very, very many men in the service of his king. And in order to rise high enough to _marry_ you, why, I had to kill even more. It was all for you, you see _._ Isn’t it romantic? All that blood? All those corpses? Isn’t it a touching engagement gift?”

She stood and began to back away from him, glancing behind her to the door, ready to bolt. He stood and blocked her path.

“You won’t refuse me now, will you?” he asked her, putting a hand to her shoulder. “Why, if you do, all those men will have died for nothing.”

“Stop it! Stop it! Stop!”

“Stop? Why moments ago you were begging me to say _anything._ No, no,” he said, putting his other hand on her shoulder and looking into her eyes. “Let me earn the full amount of hate you should have for me. You should feel the full depth of it, know the complete truth. Your uncle, and your cousin? I ordered them killed. Your stepmother I killed myself, burned her alive with all her ministers. And I did it all for _you_ , princess. Will you not thank me? Will you not tell me how devoted I am?”

She stared at him in transfixed horror, tears running down her face.

“Yes, yes, good. Now you understand,” he laughed. “Oh! I almost forgot! Would you believe that there is more?”

She shook her head. “No…. _no,”_ she whined. She pulled away from him, but he grabbed her by the wrists.

“You don’t want to listen? You don’t want to hear more? You’re going to. Do you know? That I sold my own body for war funds? Ah, but you’re not so horrified as I would like for that. You hardly understand what that means, do you? Such innocence. Stacked against my other sins, I admit, it is a petty thing. But trust me, your people would have forgiven the bloodshed, even lauded it, but if they knew their princess sullied the name of Windham by taking a whore to bed and putting him on the throne, they would curse the both of us.”

“Let me go,” Charlotte whimpered, tugging to pull her arms from his grip.

“No, no, we’re almost done now, but there is…. One more thing. One more thing I must tell you. The rest I killed for a crown, but do you know why…?” he trailed off, his sorrow and self-loathing finally catching up with his tongue and filling his crusted eyes with tears. “Do you know why I killed _him_?”

She shook her head and mouthed _please stop_ through tears.

“Because I loved him. I loved him,” he sobbed. “So much. That the thought of him leaving my grasp made me hate him, do you understand, now, Princess?” he said between gasping sobs. “Go,” he said, releasing her and collapsing into himself against tears. “Leave,” he said, waving weakly toward the door. “Leave, and be glad I don’t love you.”

She dashed through the door, not looking back. Two of her maids stood at the door in horrified silence. They had overheard, then. Good. He hoped the whole kingdom had overheard. He shut the door, and collapsed to sit with his back to it.

His men wouldn’t let him leave. They watched him in shifts and he understood well enough that he was on suicide watch. He ate when food was placed in front of him, even though it tasted like nothing and weighed like lead in his stomach, because they would bother him until he ate if he didn’t. He slept whenever he could. Sometimes he dreamed of Guts and wept upon waking. But usually he lay awake, thinking of Guts’ dead eyes and his blood on his hands, wanting to weep more, grief and guilt all he had left, but he didn’t even have that in him most of the time, now.

He was hollow, without desire or will. He did as he was told and little else. What did they want from him? He had won a war, seen to it that they all received lands and titles, what more could they possibly want from him? Eventually they all seemed to understand that he was worthless, the husk of a person, and left him alone, except for Casca, who spoke to him with forced cheeriness and took him in a carriage to a fine house somewhere out in the country. But Casca had to rest sometime and once when she did, he wandered out into the countryside, into the wood, for two days, until, delirious from thirst, he threw himself to the bottom of a rocky ravine. The fall didn’t kill him, but it did break his right arm and his neck. He lay there and thought of Guts, bleeding out in the snow, the pain of the loss bleeding into the pain of his broken bones. He realized that he didn’t have the behelit anymore, hadn’t had it for a long time, but wasn’t sure when he had lost it. As night fell he heard the howling of wolves, and then nothing else.

4

“I told you once that you belong to me. That remains true. If you want your freedom so badly, wrest it from me with your sword.”

“Can’t we just smile and say ‘take care’?”

Griffith held his sword at the ready, his face a mask of icy fury, his lips pulled back ever so slightly in the ghost of a snarl, his eyes unblinking, predatory.

He looked at Guts face. He blinked. _Smile and say “take care?”_ Those weren’t the words of someone who hated him so badly he would kill him to be free of him. There was sorrow there.

There was hope, there.

Griffith let out a breath and sheathed his sword. “Walk with me,” he said, twitching his chin over his shoulder for Guts to follow.

All was silent except for the crunch and creak of their steps in the snow. Griffith didn’t dare look at the man, but felt his presence beside him as if he were being pulled by his gravity. His muscles were tense, and he fought to keep his gait steady. He led them between two pine trees laden with snow, outside the view of the other captains of the Hawks.

“Well?” Guts asked when Griffith said nothing.

Griffith stared at him for a long moment, trying to find a way to make his case. He found nothing.

“Please,” Griffith said.

“Please what?” Guts asked, pulling at the collar of his cape.

“Please don’t do this,” Griffith said, the words spilling out of his mouth. “Please don’t go. I need you.”

Guts let out a breath through pursed lips, a puff made visible by the cold air. “You don’t need me. The war’s over. I can’t do all this politics crap. I’d just be an embarrassment, like Casca keeps saying.”

Griffith shook his head. “Not as a soldier. Just to be by my side. For me. Please, I know you must hate me—“

“Hate you?” Guts asked in utter bewilderment. “Why would I hate you?”

“Because…?” Griffith was entirely taken aback. “Because I’ve asked too much of you. I’ve had you do my dirty work. You’ve—“ _you’ve seen how cruel and disgusting I can be and what no part of it._ “You don’t.”

“ _No_. It’s all the same to me. If we’ve got to do it to get you your dream then that’s how it is.”

“But…? Then why? Why are you leaving?”

“Like I said, you don’t need me anymore, you’ve just got to marry the princess and wait for the king to die.”

“But….” Griffith hesitated. Moments ago, he had been willing to wager his life on the narrow chance of keeping this man in it. Why was it so difficult to wager his pride as well? “I do need you,” the words seemed to make his throat ache as they passed through. “I don’t want it without you,” he said, realizing the truth as he spoke it. “None of it means anything without you.”

Guts shook his head, like the words weren’t making any sense to him. “Why?”

“Because you’re the only person I can truly speak to, you are my only friend. Please,” he said, the last word coming out in a whisper.

Guts narrowed his eyes at him. “Friend?”

“Yes, of course, why would you question it?”

Guts frowned and shifted. “Listen, the night… the night Julius and Adonis died, I came to the princess’s party to report to you.”

“I never saw you.”

“Yeah, because you were with the princess, at the fountain, and Casca didn’t want me to interrupt, so… I heard what you said to her. That none of us are your friends.”

Griffith stood quietly for a moment, mouth slightly open, trying to remember the details of the conversation. “Guts, you must understand… I didn’t mean… .”

“Yeah you did,” Guts said. Griffith opened his mouth to protest, but Guts waved his hand. “It’s alright. I don’t have some big dream. I don’t have something driving me forward. I just wanna survive. So I can’t be your equal, I can’t be your friend, while I’m here, as one of the Hawks. That’s why I’ve got to go.”

“So you can be my friend?”

“Yeah.”

Griffith broke into laughter. “And I… I nearly--! You would have killed me!” he continued to laugh, going slightly hysterical, holding his side.

“Hey, don’t make it sound like it would have been easy.”

“Oh, the chance I would have won would be so narrow it’s barely worth considering. I don’t think you realize how far you’ve come,” he waved his hand and looked up at him fondly. “You quite outclass me now.”

Guts gave a little scoffing laugh, but his lips curled into a sheepish smile. He was pleased, flattered.

“I would risk it, however,” Griffith said. “To keep you by my side.”

“Are you still really gonna make me fight you if I want to leave?”

“Are you truly leaving so you can better be my friend?”

“Yeah.”

Griffith shook his head. “Then no,” he took in a deep breath. “I release you, but….”

“Yeah?”

“Come back to me,” he breathed. “I cannot force you, you are free man, but…” _If you come back to me you will be even more fully mine. By choice. Irrevocably._ “When you’ve found what you’re looking for, come back to me. Please.”

“Alright,” Guts said seriously, with a little nod.

“Thank you,” he said, and, on impulse, took Guts’ right hand in both of his. He looked into his face and, finding himself unable to express what he felt in any other way, he bent to press a kiss into the back of his hand.

“Hey,” Guts said, but didn’t immediately pull his hand back. “I’m not your damn princess.”

“I know,” Griffith said. “I know you’re not.”

**

Winter melted into spring, spring warmed to summer and summer faded into fall. Griffith was sitting in a window seat, reading, when the dogs started barking in a cacophony. Griffith looked up to see what the commotion was, expecting a rabbit, not a man in a red cape whose walk he knew even from a hundred yards away as he strode up his drive.

Griffith left the book on the sill and walked out the door, down his wide front steps, breaking into a run as his feet hit gravel. Guts shooed and barked and the dogs scattered, filling Griffith’s heart with affection at this absurd man as he ran toward him. Griffith’s heart pounded as he skidded to a halt in front of Guts, feeling anticipation so acute it was akin to fear.

“You’re back,” he said.

“Yeah,” Guts said simply, smiling down at him in a way that was warm, and genuine, and completely heart-melting.

_I adore this man,_ Griffith thought with a kind of blinding clarity. He wanted to snake himself around him and never let him go.

“I didn’t think you’d be _this_ glad to see m—“

Guts stopped suddenly because Griffith was throwing himself at him, wrapping arms around his neck and legs around his waist, clinging to him like a tree.

Guts overbalanced and laughed as he fell, taking Griffith with him and scaring a flock of birds out of a nearby tree. Griffith sat, grinning, with knees on either side of Guts’ ribs for a long, gleeful moment before Guts rolled the both of them over, slamming Griffith’s back to the ground. Griffith’s heart raced as he looked up to his face, shadowed in the midday sun, but looking at him with soft, total fondness. Griffith was helpless under the weight of his body and his gaze.

Guts rolled off of him and sat in the grass, leaving Griffith somewhat disappointed.

“I missed you terribly,” Griffith said as Guts looked away shyly.

“Yeah, I… I missed you too. Don’t think I realized how much until just now. But, yeah.”

Griffith stood and pulled Guts to his feet. The two of them walked side by side up the drive. Griffith kept glancing at him only to find him glancing right back.

“Is this your place now?” Guts wondered out loud. “I looked for you in the capitol, but they told me you were here.”

“Yes, welcome to my estate,” he said, waving his hand at the big, rectangular house. “It’s actually quite a bit more modest than what I could have asked for, but this place was lying empty, and I didn’t want to have to wait while a home was built for me, or rely on too many servants.”

“It’s… big.”

“Yes. I feel like I’ve spent most of the past year ordering furniture, but if I’m ever to entertain any of the nobility I must impress. Some of our old friends are building nearby. I’m hoping this peace will last long enough for all of us to enjoy it.”

Guts made a _hrmph_ sound at that.

“Promise me you won’t leave again,” Griffith said just before they reached the steps.

Guts stopped short, and Griffith stopped with him.

“I… can’t promise you that, Griffith.”

“Please, Guts.”

Guts made no answer.

“If you must go, at least give me some warning, at least tell me why, and where. Please.”

“Not like you to… ask,” Guts said, shifting uncomfortably.

“You’re going to have to get used to it. Please, I’m begging you, Guts. I keep… thinking back to this winter. If… if you had gone like you intended, without warning, without explanation, it would have devastated me. I think it may have destroyed me.”

“I’m sorry,” Guts said, and he _looked_ sorry. Like a chastised child. Like a kicked dog.

The contrast from Guts previous soft, fond little smiles made Griffith feel awful. “No, no. It’s not… it’s not your fault. You… you quite undo me.”

“I’m sorry,” Guts repeated, looking bewildered.

“No! _No._ It’s nothing to apologize for,” Griffith said, closing his eyes and putting his fingers to his temple. “It’s nothing you _did,_ it’s who you _are._ You can’t help that you… have this effect on me. Oh, try to forget it,” Griffith shook his head and led Guts into the house, holding open one of the wide, double doors for him. He led him past a foyer with a high ceiling and into a sitting room. Guts leaned his sword against a wall and seated himself on a dainty blue sofa. He threw his feet in his still dirty boots on an ottoman. Atrocious manners. No sense of propriety. Griffith adored him.

“Tell me, where did your travels take you?” Griffith asked, sitting beside him. “What did you find?”

Guts was leaning back with his arms folded behind his head, overly casual. “Made friends with an old blacksmith and his daughter. Fought in some tournaments.”

“And did you find what you were looking for? A dream?”

“Yeah, I think I did,” he leaned forward and looked to Griffith seriously. “I want to get stronger. Singing my sword is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. That’s always going to be true, and if that’s the case, I want to be the best swordsman I can be.”

Griffith laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Guts, you— _how_?”

“I’m serious,” Guts said, slightly affronted.

“You defeated _a hundred men._ Singlehandedly. How much stronger do you believe you can _get_? I’m not sure there’s another person in the whole world who could defeat you as it is.”

“Not a person,” Guts said darkly. “Things like Zodd.”

Griffith stared at him. “You know I believe you could do it,” he said. “But I hope you never have to.”

“What about you? I thought you’d be king by now.”

“Yes… well. About that,” Griffith said, crossing his arms over his stomach.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not sure if I should. Anymore.”

Guts shook his head. “What?”

“I’ve begun to doubt my own judgment.”

Guts laughed. “Who the hell else’s judgment is better?”

“I’m… flattered, but…”

“Wasn’t that the dream? Wasn’t that what we were fighting for?”

“Perhaps, but…” Griffith trailed off, crossing his arms across his stomach again, a nauseous expression on his face.

“Griffith?”

“This is going to be very difficult for me to say,” Griffith said, holding up a hand. “So please… don’t interrupt me,” he paused, looking away out a window, collecting his thoughts and his words. “I find I am… frighteningly compromised. I keep thinking back to that morning you left. I’ve had _nightmares_ about it! You could have killed me. That was the most likely outcome of that duel and that would have been the end of it. The end of me, the end of the Hawks, the end of the dream. I could have killed you, and if I had, I would not have walked away from that hill whole. We could have both killed each other! For nothing! All because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you, do you understand? I would die for you,” he said, closing his eyes and putting his closed fists near his heart. “I would trade it all for you. A castle, a kingdom, everything. If you told me to win my kingdom, I would do it. If you told me I’ve already gone too far and I should stop, I would do it. Which means…” he took a deep, shaky breath. “A kingdom isn’t my dream anymore.” He opened his eyes to look at Guts, hopelessly, helplessly. “It’s you.”

Griffith paused there with his hands open to him. A kind of challenge, or surrender. Guts just stared at him, still, eyes round and unreadable. When Griffith didn’t go on, he said “What do you want me to do? What does that mean?”

“It means… you don’t have to do anything. But… if I had to choose between living in a palace, with the entire earth at my command, without you, and living on the street with nothing but the clothes on my back, but with you by my side, I would choose destitution, and you. Or… fighting monsters beside you, I suppose,” Griffith laughed. “If that’s what you’re going to be doing.”

“I don’t want you to fight monsters with me!”

Griffith made a small, devastated sound.

“Not because I don’t want you, but come on! That’s good enough for me, but it’s not good enough for you!”

“It _is_ though,” Griffith said sincerely.

“No! You deserve to not sleep in the woods and wonder where your next meal is.”

“You deserve that too, you deserve everything good, a kingdom if you want it.”

“You’d… plot it all out like you wanted and just hand it to me?”

“No. But only because I don’t think you would want it. But think! You could be a very powerful man, because I would be king and you would have my ear. I would give you anything you wanted. Everything wealth and influence could buy. Think of it! I would rule the kingdom, and you--! You would rule me.” The thought gave Griffith a dizzying pleasure.

Guts looked like Griffith had honestly knocked the wind out of him. “Griffith, I…. Thanks, I guess, but I don’t want any of that.”

“I have overwhelmed you.”

“Yeah, you sure as hell have.”

The two sat in silence for a moment.

Guts leaned forward and rubbed his face with one hand. “I came here thinking I’d tell you what I thought my dream was, and hope it would be good enough for you, and now… I don’t even know.”

“Something else I must apologize for. I’m sorry I ever made you think you weren’t my equal. I’m sorry for what you overhead. You have always been more than good enough for me. It’s just… for much of my life I’ve had to pretend to be more than human. That’s how one inspires others to risk their lives for you, I’m afraid. You’ve always been… less susceptible to that act than most, which is part of why I value you so much.”

“Bullshit.”

“Guts…”

“No, listen. You _are_ superhuman. You’ve done stuff I can’t imagine anyone else pulling off. Or even _thinking_ they could pull off. You saying that’s an act?”

“No, I suppose not entirely, but… I have weaknesses, Guts.”

“What weaknesses?”

“ _You_ , mostly. Though if you’d never come along it would have been something else, probably. Maybe. I don’t know. My point is, you were never less than me. I’ve spent nearly the past year sitting here and reading, and thinking, and I’ve realized that trying to say you belonged to me was a farce. You’ve held a power over me from nearly the beginning. Perhaps since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

“Nothing! It’s just… you should know.”

“So what. What do we do, now?”

“The beauty of it is, Guts,” Griffith said with an ear-splitting grin. “That it doesn’t matter.”

Guts let out a harsh laugh. “It doesn’t matter? Hell, I ran off because of you. Everything I’ve done the past four years I’ve done because of you.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Pfffft, _no._ It’s been the best part of my life.”

Hearing that warmed Griffith from his ears to the soles of his feet. “Truly, Guts, it doesn’t matter. I know I’ve been living the past several years of my life as if compelled by demons, but there is no hurry! We don’t have to decide what we do with our lives today, or ever! We won a war, we came up to the ranks of the nobility from nothing, and if neither of us ever do anything again other than rest on our laurels in the countryside, who could blame us?”

“ _You_ could. I thought you said you couldn’t stand the idea of just living without some dream.”

“I wouldn’t be just living. I’d be enjoying your company, being near you, making you happy, I hope. Stay the winter here with me. Let us enjoy at least some of the fruits of our victories. We’ll decide later. Or we’ll never decide! Whatever you want.”

“Whatever _I_ want?”

“Yes.”

“I was expecting to come here and hear you say _you’re mine again._ And I would have to shut you down and say no, I’m here again but only as long as I say so. And then you pull… this. Turning the tables on me.”

Griffith looked down at his feet, tapping them on the rug. “You always were free to go, really. I couldn’t have realistically stopped you.”

“What if I walked out of here and said I don’t want to see you again.”

“Then I… I would try to talk you out of it, but if you were determined I would let you go.”

“And what would you do?”

“Be completely devastated.”

“But what _then_?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, malinger here, depressed, probably. I can’t imagine wanting a kingdom, or even this place, without you in it.”

“What if I said you can’t? What if I order you to take good care of yourself even if I’m not here?”

“And still left me? Why?”

“This is a what if.”

“I would… I would do my best to carry on.”

“Then you _are_ mine.”

The statement made Griffith’s heart stop. “Say it again.”

“You’re mine,” Guts unfolded himself, moved closer to Griffith and put both his hands on Griffith’s cheeks. “You belong to me.”

“Yes,” Griffith whispered, closing his eyes, feeling fully relaxed for the first time in years. “ _Yes._ I’m yours. I belong to you. What would you have me do?”

Guts shook his head, smiled, still bewildered. “Do what makes you happy.”

Griffith thought back on his years of pursuing his castle. Years that had brought him both elation and self-loathing. He’d never felt free to simply do as he pleased. But now that he was being asked to. Now that it was his duty to Guts…

He opened his eyes and gazed up at him. Slowly, he put both hands to Guts’ face and pulled him into a brief, forceful kiss. He pulled back, heart pounding, watching Guts’ face to see whether or not he had just ruined his own life.

Guts just looked stunned. He covered Griffith’s hand on his face with his. “Was this always what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Griffith hissed. “No? I don’t know. I wanted you from the first time I ever saw you. I thought it was just attraction, but you didn’t seem interested so I pushed it to the back of my mind. That it could be something more didn’t occur to me until you left. If you don’t want me that way, I won’t ever again, I… I just want to be near you.”

Guts listened to him, watching his mouth as he spoke, and, in a jerky motion, pulled him in to kiss him again.

Guts was not an experienced kisser. His lips were tense against Griffith’s. Griffith softened his own mouth against his, pulling him in closer, trying to show him the way. Griffith found himself crawling into Guts’ lap, coaxing tension out of the muscles of Guts’ neck with his hands, carding his fingers through his hair. When he pulled back to look at Guts’ face, Guts was gazing at him with a sort of adoring wonder.

_Perhaps…_

“What are you thinking?” Guts asked.

“Perhaps I do have some power over you yet,” he said softly, and wrapped himself around him as Guts folded him up in his arms, holding him tight.

_I’ll use it all for good,_ he thought to himself.

Coda

The broken blade of Griffith’s sword went flying. Griffith fell, untouched, but brought to his knees nonetheless.

“Take care,” Guts said, and Griffith heard his footsteps grow further away in the snow, heard Casca calling after him, but he didn’t dare look up. He was on the edge of losing his death grip on his composure and if he had to take in the reality of Guts walking away from him for the last time--

He held on to his turned wrist and focused on the pain, the only part of this wretched scene he could process or accept.

This was the one outcome he hadn’t taken under consideration, because it was the outcome he had demanded this duel in order to reject. That Guts should defeat him and walk away from Griffith with Griffith still living was unthinkable. He rejected it even as he was living through it.

_Why?_ Griffith thought, but he had to shut down even that small thought, because that was the doorway to more pain and he couldn’t cry or scream in front of his captains.

Someone—Judeau, held out a hand to help him up, but he didn’t take it. His façade was cracking in several places and if any amount of human kindness got into one of those cracks he was going to shatter. He stood, pushing himself up with hands and knees shaking. He didn’t dare look at any of the people gathered on this hill, because if he did, and he saw their disappointment, or worse, their pity, if he felt the weight of their expectations upon him, he was going to crumble.

He didn’t look. Corkus asked him something about who would lead the raiders. Griffith shook his head and waved a dismissive hand at him. He couldn’t answer, because if he opened his mouth to speak he knew he was going to cry.

So he walked stiffly down the hill, toward the town, without a word and with his remaining captains and Rickert shouting after him. He couldn’t divide out their words from each other to determine their meaning, but they felt like stones pelting his back.


End file.
